like wilted flowers on a day that was too hot
by bobbingformangos
Summary: She smells like stale beer, coconut oil, and wilted flowers on a day that is too hot. She has not been watered in days and she is slowly dying as the summer sun continues to shine down on her. (6weekSQ)


_**6weekSQ.**__ challenge theme for week of may 26th through june 1: __**swan queen meets nature. **_

_**(1/3 Post S3) **_

* * *

She smells like stale beer, coconut oil, and wilted flowers on a day that is too hot. She has not been watered in days and she is slowly dying as the summer sun continues to shine down on her. Emma should pick herself up off the beach as the sun rises high in the sky, but she simply can't anymore. It's hard to move. It's hard to talk. And she hopes that no one finds her here on the edge where the forest and the beach meet in some kind of natured love affair.

Emma thinks of love affairs and how the one she wanted didn't happen and she feels her heart clench. It would have been wonderful, she thought as the sand heated up under the sun. It would have been hard and it would hurt but it would have also been wonderful and she imagined days on the beach with children running around and screaming with joy as she laid held Regina against her chest and kissed her head and her shoulder and caressed her cheek before they laughed at the laughing and screaming children.

Fuck, it would have been beautiful.

But it was never a possibility and Emma realized that the moment that Regina tried to manipulate her out of town.

Emma could identify each time that Regina held want for her in her eyes (honestly, it was a shit load) and she could identify each time that Regina got scared and she could identify each time that the dark haired woman did something to destroy the possibility that they could fall for each other.

It was the dark haired former queen that washed away their story over and over again. Now, it was dissolving in the ocean near Emma's feet, becoming suds and feeding sea life and the possibilities started to fade into the blue green water.

She could have made her smile. She did! She remembers sitting at the table in Regina's office and causing the smile, the pure smile, and Emma had thought, in those moments, that she could do that for her entire life. She could cause Regina to smile so brightly that the sun wouldn't rival her. How could someone so bright and filled with love ever be considered evil?

Emma could love her forever, past death and resurrection and through life after life.

But it's washed away.

And Emma cried and watched and then closed her eyes. Rinse and repeat.

* * *

"Ma?" Henry's voice wakes Emma up after the eighth time she fell asleep, this time curled into herself with the water licking at her bare toes.

She blinks her eyes, finding it really hard to open them, but Henry is calling for her and the water is icy and she really did need to open her eyes. She could do it, she knew she could.

"Ma!" Henry yells, voice closer and louder, and it startles Emma as if she was a baby and not a grown woman and she still smells like beer and wilted flowers and she wonders if this is what sadness smells like. She wonders if this is what it smells like to have her love take away and she can only blame the universe because no one meant to hurt her.

Actually, she probably smelt like self hatred too because boy did she hate herself for how she hurt Regina.

"What are you doing, Ma?" Henry asks and his voice is suddenly low and sad and he suddenly sounds so much older than what he is and Emma has become that shitty mother that their kid finds and feels like they have to take care of.

So she wipes away the crust from her eyes and tries to sit up and there is sand in her hair. She's a mess and she knows it but her kid is worried about her and its overwhelming.

"I," Emma opens her mouth to speak but she quickly closes it because tears are in the back of her throat and begging to come out of her mouth in waves and waves. Instead she tries to tug on a smile and reaches out her hand and Henry grasps it in his and she tugs him down next to her.

And suddenly he's a little boy again in need of reassurance (little boy, little boy, like her memories, her fake memories) and Emma wraps her arms around her son and holds tight to him.

She'll never have little girls with bright smiles and brown eyes who look like a woman she fell madly in love with one day without realizing and she will never hold that woman in her arms and she'll never have that love that defies fucking gravity and she tried to stuff it down, so far down, in her stomach.

Emma holds Henry close and whispers over and over again, "I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm all right."

Emma Swan, one day she'll believe it.

* * *

She doesn't believe it a month later. She now smells like coconuts and dried herbs and sadness that even seeps between the walls of the apartment that she shares with her parents and baby brother and she wonders if that's apart of why her mother cries at night.

But she probably cries because the baby cries and there was a moment that Emma was so on edge that she yells at her crying mother. She actually yells at her, screams at her for being so stupid for naming the child after a man who abandoned Emma.

"But maybe that's your thing, you know," Emma sneers, manic and tired and sad, oh so sad, as she continues, "becoming so close to everything that abandons me, like you did. It probably makes you feel better. So good choice, Mary Margaret, good choice."

And sometimes Emma can't even call her fucking Snow white, she calls her her cursed name, because everything nowadays sits unwell in her stomach.

But she swallows it like she swallows the concerned looks and her love for Regina and it all becomes too much and she starts the process of becoming numb.

Life's easier when she can't feel, right?

* * *

"I'm sorry," Emma says the first time she sees her in over two months. She's tried to stay away but even without drinking (it's been 54 days) Emma is compulsive and emotional and bold.

Its midnight and Emma is walking around the pier because going home when she knows her mother is awake is not an option. So she barely goes home and she should look for her own place because her kid wants to sleep near her but she doesn't.

She would only haunt it like she haunts the apartment and Emma wonders when she turned into a ghost instead of a person filled with life.

She's pushed away her parents and she's pushed away Hook and she's pushed away every other person expect Henry but there are only so many times she can promise that she'll be all right before they sound like static.

But Regina was standing behind her when Emma turned around and for a moment, Emma thought it finally happened, she was having a delusion because she dreamed of nights on the pier with this woman watching the stars and wishing upon them.

But Regina's face held worry, her eyes brown and wide and her mouth slightly parted and her lips pink without makeup. And it hurt so much to see Regina there, vulnerable but still slightly guarded, and she said it again with her scratchy voice, "I'm sorry."

Regina shook her head at Emma, opening her mouth a little more to let out a sigh, as she moved closer. She frowned, because it's been over two months since she's seen the blonde and couldn't stop thinking about her and Regina thought that she threw all her feeling away into the ocean but it seemed that it settled in her chest and grew, grew, grew and overtook the pain that the hopelessness of losing another "true love".

It had been fucking Emma Swan all along and, even now, Regina hasn't all the way realized that.

What she did know was that her son was worried and Snow was worried and it was David, fucking David, that came to her door to beg for her help. Regina wondered if Emma knew how much her dad loved her. How much he cared about her and cried over her and wanted to protect her.

"I know you are, Miss Swan," Regina said cooly causing Emma to flench and Emma's arms are around her torso quickly, needing to protect herself from the ice escaping Regina's mouth. It was barely fall but somehow Regina made Emma feel like winter was just a day away and it sliced away at her already fragile heart.

Emma nodded her head, "Oh."

Regina took another step closer, undoing the belt of her jacket and taking it off her shoulders. She pushes it forward to the blonde who is dressed in her tank top and jeans, lifting it up, "You look cold, Emma, take it."

Emma looks up to meet her eyes and shakes her head. She takes a step back because she knows what it feels like to have the ocean carry away possibilities and love.

Regina steps forward again and again and Emma is between the railing and this woman and Regina pushes the jacket toward Emma, "Please."

Her breath is gone and her chest hurt but she reaches out to take the jacket and shrugs it onto her chilled body and she murmurs her thanks and thats the end of the talking.

Emma's wrapped in Regina's jacket and Regina slowly steps to stand next to Emma, leaning against the railing, and that's it. No talking, just being.

And maybe Emma Swan just needed someone who would be with her for a while.

* * *

A meteor is shooting across the sky when Regina reaches out to touch her arm. It's the forth night the mayor comes to the pier, knowing Emma will be there, and its the forth night that Emma wearing Regina's jacket.

Her touch stings and Emma quickly steps away, moving twelve feet across the width of the pier to get distance between herself and Regina.

They stay like that for the rest of the night until the sun comes up and eats away at them both.

Before she leaves, Regina meets Emma's eyes. Regina's red lips are downturn, eyes sad and desperate, and Emma wonders what exactly was she trying to do coming out here each night.

* * *

She touches her arm again and there is purple smoke and they are in the hallway of Regina's house. Emma's never been upstairs but she notices the crown molding and the color scheme and they are outside closed doors and Emma smiles at that, at the fact that Regina didn't like doors opened either.

"Come on, Emma," Regina says softly, gently, and it warms a tiny spot in Emma's chest, she thinks her lungs. Regina lets her hand slide down Emma's arm to grasp her hand and Emma think about how this is too much, this is too much, this is too fucking much for her but Regina is pulling her toward a door in the center of the hallway and between all the other doors.

She opens the door and the smell of lavender hits Emma's nose and she sighs in contentment. She loves that smell and she wonders if Regina knew that.

The room is white with fresh lavender in glass vases around the room and Regina sits Emma down on the bed. She tries to smile at the blonde but it comes out more like a cringe but Emma doesn't care because Regina is gentle and understanding about things unsaid and she bends down to unlace Emma's boots.

Emma's not wearing socks when Regina takes off her boots, and it surprises Emma when the former queen leans forward to unzip her jeans and help pull them down from her hips. She's gentle, so gentle, and she hesitates before pulling, giving Emma time to protest. Regina sits back on her heels, folding the jeans and sitting them to the side.

And then she leans forward to kiss the spot under Emma's knee, red lipstick leaving a mark. She moves to kiss the other leg, more red lipstick.

And Emma can breathe for the first time.

Regina stands up and leans forward to kiss Emma's forehead. She lets a hand fall to the blonde's cheek, caresses, and says lightly, "I need you to rest, Emma. I need you to get better."

And soon Emma's head is guided down to the pillow and the covers are pulled up and Emma wonders when the last time someone needed her to get better instead of needed her to give, give, give because of some evil or curse of nonsense.

So, with another kiss on her forehead, Emma falls into a soft sleep for the first time in a very long time.

* * *

Emma doesn't leave the room for three days. She rests and rests and rests. Regina comes in every few hours to kiss her forehead and run her nails over her cheeks.

* * *

"I'm all right, Henry," Emma says to the boy when he crawls into bed with her. He wiggles his way under the sheets and into her arms and she hold him close, her baby boy.

Henry shakes his head against her chest and it causes her to hold her breath but he quickly speaks up, shattering her world and building it up all at once, "You're not all right, Ma, but you will be."

* * *

The forth morning Regina opens the door to the room. Then the curtains. And finally, the sun shines on Emma in a new way.

Emma blinks her eyes away and finds Regina seated near her stomach on the edge of the bed. Her hand is up playing with Emma's golden curls and she lets a small smile curl onto her lips. She just woke up, Emma knew. Her hair was slightly disheveled, a hand had ran through it, and she was in her jammies, and her face clean of make up.

"You look beautiful," Emma found herself admitting and Regina's smile reached her eyes and her hand slide to cup Emma's cheek.

Regina leaned down, her eyes never leaving Emma's because it was that moment, that important moment, that they had to look deeper behind irises and pupils and when Regina's lips connected with Emma's, Emma felt the warmth in her chest spread all across her body.

It was just a press of lips, simple really, but it was so much more.

It was beautiful really.

"Thank you, darling," Regina pressed into Emma's lips causing the blonde to chuckle.

It sounded beautiful.

Hearing Emma laugh.

And Regina thought about trying to make that happen again.

* * *

Emma wondered if the ocean brought things back to the shore often because she was sure that their love and their stories were thrown out and washed away and turned into foam.

But it was back and it glowed in her heart and in Regina's heart and this was it, this was their story and their happiness and their love.

They were building it, slowly, but they were building it.

Emma smelt like lavender, apple blossoms, and blooming flowers in the summer time (like lilies or peonies). She was watered and growing and nurtured and like spring time, there were harsh storms, but the days afterward helped heal her. The gentle reassurances and the understanding that she was much more fragile that she ever let on.

Regina kissed her forehead and she kissed the corner of Regina's mouth and one day, well, one day both women bloomed and watched their children screaming and laughing as they held each other on the beach.


End file.
